Fifteen Years in Hell eBook

Of this we have an illustration in the habit of practical
gamblers who, when about to engage in contests requiring
the keenest observation and the most sagacious calculation,
and involving an important stake, always keep themselves
cool either by total abstinence from fermented liquors,
or by the use of those of the weakest kind, in very
small quantities. We find that the greatest part
of that intellectual labor which has most extended
the domain of thought and human knowledge has been
performed by men of sobriety, many of them having
been drinkers of water only. Under this last
category may be ranked Demosthenes, Johnson, Haller,
Bacon, Milton, Dante, etc. Johnson, it is
true, was a great tea drinker. Voltaire drank
coffee at times to excess, and occasionally a small
quantity of light wine. So, also, did Fontenelle.
Newton solaced himself with the fumes of tobacco.
Of Locke, whose long life was devoted to constant
intellectual labor, who appears independently of his
eminence in his special objects of pursuit one of the
best informed men of his time, the following explicit
testimony is found by one who knew him well:
His diet was the same as that of other people, except
he usually drank nothing but water, and he thought
that his abstinence in this respect had preserved
his life so long, although naturally his constitution
was so weak. In addition to these examples, which
I have quoted at length, I might also mention the case
of Cornaro, the old Italian philosopher, who at the
age of thirty-five found himself on a bed of misery
and imminent death through intemperance. He amended
his way of life, and for upwards of four score years
after, by a temperate course of living, lived happily
and did all the important work which has placed his
name among the men of great intellectual powers.

CHAPTER V.

Quit college—­Shattered nerves—­Summer and autumn days—­Improvement—­Picnic
parties—­A fall—­An untimely storm—­Crawford’s beer and ale—­Beer
brawls—­County fairs and their influence on my life—­My yoke of white
oxen—­The “red ribbon”—­“One McPhillipps”—­How I got home and how I
found myself in the morning—­My mother’s agony—­A day of teaching
under difficulties—­Quiet again—­Law studies at Connersville—­“Out on
a spree”—­What a spree means.

I left college in the spring of 1866, and returned
home to the farm where I spent the summer and autumn
months in a very nervous and discontented manner.
For over four months my mental condition bordered on
that of a maniac, so completely had the use of liquor
shattered my nervous system. I became alarmed
at my state, and for a time was deterred from drinking,
or, if I drank at all, the quantity was small.
But fresh air and the little work which I did on the
farm, soon restored me. As the summer wore away
I attended pleasure parties, and found, not happiness,
but a moment’s forgetfulness among the merry
picnic parties in the woods. I had also the distinguished